Learning how your room works is the first step to getting great sound. There are three main components to acoustical waves in your room.
1) the individual sound wave
2) the laminar effect that the surfaces of your room creates along with any furniture
3) the pressure zones that build up in your room
the following is to help you see the room in action and how to bring the best out if it
first lets take a look at the laminar flow and pressure zone
All audio companies have a story to tell, but sometimes these stories are based on theory instead of practice. RoomTune is based on "live sound" research instead of "sound theory". The difference between these two approaches is one is looking at sound from what it might be and the other from what it is.
Why is this important? Because every room in the world sounds unique unto itself. No two rooms in the world have ever tested exactly the same, and in our research this is very key, because we design products that give acoustical solutions around the globe, and to all acoustical environments.
It's a must for us as an industry to apply true physics instead of bad engineering.
How did the audio engineering world get mixed up and start thinking that soundwaves are straight lines? What's worse is building a false science around something that should be pretty common sense. With RoomTuning we're going to get started on the right foot.
sound waves are spherical
Here is what a stereo sound source looks like in a room.
If my room is done properly, using the attributes of the pressure zones I should be able to stand almost anywhere in the room and get close to the same volume level, plus or minus the natural rise and fall of each pressure zone and along the laminar parimeters.
There is nothing in science that tells us that the following happens.
If a sound wave was 2 dimensional it would respond at the wall more like this.
What we have found in our testing is that there is an acoustical plane that developes on any surface where the on coming wave meets with the reflective wave. We call this the laminar line or laminar flow.
The next part we need to know about what affects the pressure zone is room loading.
Room loading happens when the sound waves meet at intersections such as the corners and midseams and the mid wall ceiling or floor.
Here's a 2D look at the loading and laminar flow together. Keep in mind the floor and ceiling are doing the same thing as the walls.
All rooms because they are enclosed build sound pressure. Here's a look if the speakers and chair were gone.
Your probably starting to get the picture of how powerful the room is and how big of a role it must play in the stereo's sound. It is without a doubt the biggest component.
A misconception is that the speakers play independent of the room, but lets think about this. How can a speaker play without the room? Air pressure is a function of the room not the speaker. The speaker is a vibrating source that sends the music signal into the air in the room but it's the room that amplifies this signal. A loudspeaker can not play louder or over power what the room is doing. You may think your listening directly to a loudspeaker but if this were the case the music would sound like it was coming directly from the speaker and there would be no stereo image to speak of. The sound would be very sterile as if someone cut away the music.
Take a look at the misguided view of the speaker minus the room if it were possible. Notice how much of the sound waves are cut out.
The only way to remove the room would be to hook a tube from the speaker to your ear cutting out the room altogether. Nope, far better to use the room, and why not? The room can be a wonderful tool that allows you to recover much of the content rather than trying to cut the acoustic information out.
This is why I named the product RoomTune and started the phrase "Roomtuning". We don't want to get rid of the biggest component but use it as the most important and final part of the audio chain. Once you accept this as the "music producer" you can view the hobby with more accuracy.
Let me show you my favorite way to listen and why.
Whether I chose to listen long or wide I find that using the room gives me, one a far bigger image (more real life size), and two a lot better tonal balance.
See the curved loading parts of the room? These are my pressure zones. Some of them depending on the types of walls you have and dimentions of the room plus what is in the room will vary the size and location but this is a fairly true placement guide.
I made the drawing simple but if you saw these they would actually look like spheres. Acoustical spheres hosting the sound of what ever the source is putting into the room.
Why are the speakers and my ears sitting right in the pressure zone? Because that's where the sound is at it's most developed stage in the rooms voicing. Those who chose to be in a weaker part of a pressure zone can but I find this is where most of the musics meat is. I also like to be inside the musics envelope so I put the speakers on my side of middle, catching a fair amount of the zones pressure if I can. If I however want to be in the extreme soundstage envelope I'll move the speakers closer or further away from the walls to pick up a nice boost.
You might try this and say this doesn't sound right. That's because we haven't started voicing the pressure zones themselves yet. There are three parts to voicing to keep it simple.
ears, speakers, pressure zones
here are the most obvious places to start treating your pressure zones
the pressure origins
Here you can change the sound of your room dramatically and it's not only about turning the volume of these pressure zone origins up or down but voicing them.
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here's a look at an RT and RTD setup controlling the main on wall areas and main soundstage pressure zone
a view from your listening chair
Ready to begin?
Start your own thread in
https://tuneland.forumotion.com/f3-home-audio-systems or
https://tuneland.forumotion.com/f10-audio-around-the-world and lets have fun on your tuning journey.
There's always someone ready to help you get the best sound the hobby has to offer.
Join your Get Tuned! host Harold Cooper on you tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rufEnsVR_eE